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?óÔé¼?ôMany F1 fans have found themselves without tickets for upcoming Grands Prix, including the British GP at Silverstone, despite paying for them, due to the apparent closure of a business called Simply The Ticket. Fans, many of whom are travelling to Valencia this week for the European GP, became alarmed when tickets did not arrive and have been trying to get information over the weekend. The company?óÔé¼Ôäós website and Twitter account are no longer active.?óÔé¼?Ø

Martin Whitmarsh: ?óÔé¼?ôIf F1 is perceived as a gas-guzzling sport that has no regard to the technologies that are very relevant to automotive companies, then we really promote the wrong image. F1 should be about efficiency. People are talking about the efficient use of resources. No sport should be at liberty to spend almost unlimited amounts of money and resource with no focus on efficiency.?óÔé¼?Ø

Paul Hembery: ?óÔé¼?ôI think you have to look at someone like, maybe Michael getting the pole position. He probably would have won Monaco if he hadn’t been penalised, so why not there? Michael for Valencia, that’s where the money needs to go.?óÔé¼?Ø

Jenson Button: ?óÔé¼?ôWe?óÔé¼Ôäóve had seven different winners and no clear championship leader has emerged, so I?óÔé¼Ôäóll be looking to get a decent result under my belt next weekend in order to get my title bid back on track. I know just how strong Vodafone McLaren Mercedes can be. Valencia is a track I really enjoy; I?óÔé¼Ôäóve already won on a street circuit this year so I?óÔé¼Ôäóm definitely optimistic about having a great weekend and picking up the momentum again in the title fight.?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ôDocuments recently filed by the Formula 1’s Jersey-based parent company Delta Topco show that David Campbell was awarded a stake ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ understood to be 0.1pc ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ in the motor-racing business, which is estimated to be valued at $10bn when it is floated. The holding is split between former London O2 Arena boss Mr Campbell and his wife Tracey and comes despite his resignation in April, having been appointed to the role [head of marketing and hospitality] in July last year.?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ô?óÔé¼?ôWe have experienced incredible demand for reserved grandstand seating tickets, and customers have quickly purchased our available inventory,” said Julie Loignon, COTA’s vice president of public and community relations. “As such, we are considering installing more reserved seats between Turns 9 and 10 and between Turns 11 and 12 in place of other types of seating that had been planned for those areas.”?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ôFifty young people are in the final stretch in the race to grab an opportunity to work with F1 world champions Red Bull.They are battling for one of five internships in five key areas of the business. The month long schemes are in aerodynamics, electronics, marketing, IT and procurement. Milton Keynes-based Red Bull were keen to open the opportunities to anyone aged 16 or over, regardless of experience.?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ôAudi has won the Le Mans 24 Hours for the 11th time in 13 years, with victory this year going to Andr?â?® Lotterer, Ben?â??it Tr?â?®luyer and Marcel Fassler (the same trio as won last year), but this year they were in an Audi R18 e-tron quattro, a hybrid which uses the Williams Hybrid Power flywheel KERS system. A second Audi R18 e-tron quattro finished second, driven by Tom Kristensen, Rinaldo Capello and Allan McNish.?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ôAnthony Davidson has described himself as “overwhelmed” by the messages of support he has received in the wake of his horrific crash during the Le Mans 24 Hours endurance race on Saturday. The Sky Sports F1 co-commentator and analyst suffered two broken vertebrae after a collision with the Ferrari of Piergiuseppe Perazzini flipped his Toyota airborne and into a tyre wall.?óÔé¼?Ø

Personally, I think Newey is a little over-rated. Not so over-rated that he doesn?óÔé¼Ôäót deserve to be on the list at all, but I?óÔé¼Ôäód be very hesitant to name him the greatest of all time. To my mind, Colin Chapman deserves that title. Newey once said that when he was young and inspiration hit, he had to write it down or draw a design, even if it was three in the morning, but as he got older, he grew confident that the idea would still be there in the morning. I think Chapman would maintained this I-have-to-write-this-down-right-now approach even into his old age.

I also find that some of Chapman?óÔé¼Ôäós innovations were a bit more pure, for want of a better word. When he built the Lotus 88, he could have made something that would have beaten the competition and stayed comfortably within the rules ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ but instead, he built one of the most creative and precise pieces of engineering the sport has ever seen, and all in the name of pushing the limits of engineering. On the other hand, I can?óÔé¼Ôäót see Newey doing something like that, risking the entire car being banned in the pursuit of engineering. To my mind, car racing was just a means to an end to Chapman; a competitive environment would allow him to explore the limits of engineering faster and better than if he did it as a side project.

I also think some of Newey?óÔé¼Ôäós designs are over-stated. A lot of people expected Red Bull to be in front this year, not because they had the best drivers or the best team, but because they had Adrian Newey, as if HRT could recruit him and de la Rosa and Karthikeyan would be fighting for the World Championship overnight. That hasn?óÔé¼Ôäót happened for Red Bull; the RB8 is a good car, but it is hardly the standout of the field (right now, I think the McLaren, Lotus and Sauber are probably the three with the most potential). Don?óÔé¼Ôäót get me wrong ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ Newey is very, very good at what he does, but I think far too many people consider him to be the fact that ultimately decides a team?óÔé¼Ôäós success or failure, as if the drivers and engineers play no part in it.Prisoner Monkeys

Happy birthday!

On this day in F1

Jacques Laffite charged to victory in the Swedish Grand Prix 35 years ago today. He worked his way up to second place and was poised to take advantage when Mario Andretti ran low on fuel late in the race.

It was the first ever victory for him and Ligier. Jochen Mass was second for McLaren ahead of Carlos Reutemann’s Ferrari.

@jerseyf1 – I think Button would have the stones to say that. What gives it away as being someone else’s quote is the stuff about how Valencia’s architecture makes it the perfect environment for Formula 1.

Regarding the COTD. A lot of Chapman’s cars were fragile due to his obsession with reducing weight. He wasnt that concerned with the safety of his drivers. He designed some awesome cars, but along the way others had to make sacrifices – some of them tragic. So not only was he risking that his car couldbe banned, he was risking the lives of his drivers as well. Thats why i wouldn’t put him as number one. He deserves to be in the top 5 though.

Definitely. Does no one remember how often Newey’s early Red Bull cars broke bits & pieces? Obsessive weight savings at the expense of reliability has always been a talking point when it comes to Adrian Newey… it’s only in the last 2-3 seasons that RBR have enjoyed decent reliability, IMO.

Curious. The Simply The Ticket site seems to be back online, but the home page is merely saying that tickets for Silverstone will start to be sent out Monday 25th June. And there’s no evidence of any other packages or tickets being on sale.
Their ATOL number checks out, but there’s a link to ValenciaGrandPrix.Org in the footer that leads to a default server page – no web site.
I think they are in the process of going into Administration. If that’s the case and as they are ATOL covered, anyone who has booked air tickets as part of their package should be able to get that part of their money back. But the race tickets might be more doubtful.

Off-topic, but important: Is the European Grand Prix being discontinued? The following line has been added(with lack of citation) in the Wikipedia article named European Grand Prix under the section ‘Second modern incarnation.’ The line reads: “In March 2012, it was announced that the European Grand Prix would be discontinued in 2013, with the Spanish Grand Prix alternating between Barcelona and Valencia. Then in April 2012 it was announced that the entirety of the Grand Prix at Valencia would be discontinued and the European Grand Prix would still be existant, just not at Valencia.”

There’s actually a reference to this article in the round-up titled ‘Webber’s Red Bull future…’

While I get Windsor’s point about scaring manufacturers away, I’m not sure it would be possible to get absolutely everyone on board to keep a positive spin on today’s tires given that some drivers, even as recently as post-Canada still feel they can’t explain from one race to the next why they or another team were so hooked up on the tires that day or that stint and not another. The falling off a cliff effect is obvious. Some drivers probably feel the need to explain that that is what happened to them, and make it clear it was not their driving or what have you.

It is a bit of a lottery these days and then the debate starts from there. Does this unpredictibility make people happy with F1? Yes. Some like it. Others think it is not F1 when the drivers can’t push their cars and are limited by the tires. And again, that limitation depends on the day. Some drivers on some days can push their cars and not kill the tires. Or at least not for an unusual amount of time.

So while I do get Windor’s point, I also don’t think criticism is necessarily death. After all, he acknowledges that what Pirelli is doing is what people said they wanted to see in F1, so obviously Pirelli/F1/FIA reacted to criticism and it caused change. Whether that change was for the better is still being debated, but nonetheless criticism, constructively put, can be very good too.

Criticizing Pirelli I think is folly anyway, as they are just doing as F1 has asked of them. And if some aren’t happy, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are calling for Pirelli’s exit from F1. They might just be calling for a tweek. And in this case, this year, I think that criticism needs to be directed toward the FIA and F1, not Pirelli. But Windsor doesn’t say that. He just says to F1 insiders, stop criticizing, don’t voice your opinion, veto your staff and get your PR houses in order, and pretend everything is fine when on some days it is glaringly obvious what happend to a driver in some races and to not talk about the tires would be blatantly disingenuous.

There is another component Windsor ignores too. Many times manufacturers have left F1 and returned. They did a stint in F1, got the maximum for their advertising dollars, and when the impact of their presence in F1 waned they left, only to return at another time. Like when a single tire maker was making predictable tires to the point where nobody talked about tires as being a factor affecting the outcome, so consistant they were amongst the teams and the races throughout the season.

So there’s a balance and I’m sure Pirelli right now as a sole maker for F1 would rather rise to the debate, which as Windsor points out they have (they’ve not been baited), than to have no debate, no discussion, no mention of the name Pirelli whatsoever. And all the while many love F1 this season so Pirelli has that to throw into the mix in their defence.